Stig Dagerman (1923–1954)

É um livro confuso, exaustivo e um tanto decepcionante. Decidi lê-lo depois de o encontrar na biblioteca e ler o resumo na sua parte posterior, achando que seria algo totalmente diferente. Por várias vezes, pensei que seria melhor não o terminar... apenas não o fiz porque não gosto de deixar leituras incompletas.
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It's a confusing, exhausting and somewhat disappointing book. I decided to read it after finding it at the library and reading the summary at the back, thinking it would be something entirely different. Several times, I thought it would be better not to finish... I just didn't finish it because I don't like leaving readings incomplete.… (more)

Written in 1948, this Swedish classic typifies Nordic literature in its sparse darkness and tension throughout.

This slim novel begins on the day of the protagonist's mother's funeral. She is a woman who was generally not well liked by neighbours or family, but as his mother the young man loved her and is bereft by her loss. As the novel develops, his grief and confusion is heightened as his father brings the woman he was having an affair with whilst his wife was still alive into the young man's life, and he becomes bent on getting his revenge on his father and his lover.

The first part of the novel I found to be quite difficult as the grief of the young man is pronounced and makes for bleak reading, but it slowly begins to reveal itself as a novel of some brilliance. Dagerman keeps the reader in an enthralled state of tension as the young man becomes more and more erratic and unreliable in thought and action as he tries to make sense of his grief and his confused feelings towards his father, his father's lover and his own fiancee.Through his thoughts, Dagerman explores the complexity of love and hate and how they are inextricably linked as two sides of the same coin.

Sadly Dagerman took his own life in his early 30s, and it feels as if some of his own wrestlings with life seep their way into the inner turmoil of the protagonist as he tries to make sense of what is unfolding around him.

4 stars - a dark and gripping novel that keeps you tense throughout.… (more)

Stig Dagerman was a leading writer in the post-WWII Swedish movement Fyrtiotalism, which was concerned with existentialist themes and influenced by Dostoevsky, Kafka, and others. He killed himself at 31 years old. In Wedding Worries, a group of people in a small village gather over one twenty four hour period and in alternately absurdist, melancholic, transcendent, satirical, and burlesque tones they struggle and exist with the despair.

“She turned off the light and wakened the boy. How do you say in German “Am I a bad person?” He answered and fell back asleep.
Since then she always uses this. Bin ich ein schlechter Mensch? Saying it this way has its advantages. It sounds as if it concerns someone else, the foreign tongue serving as a buffer between the scream and silence. It turns the whole thing into a conundrum, and she often ends up thinking: Good Lord, I’m really an intellectual, you know. Fortunately she doesn’t know enough German to ever be able to answer her own question.”

“But Westlund doesn’t like seeing Siri’s heart cut out like a piece of cake.
“What have you done to the girl?” he shouts again, and now they all come and crowd together under then pendant lamp.
“We’ve just opened her little heart,” Mary explains, “There’s nothing more wonderful than opening small, small hearts.”
“When did you get this?” Irma asks in a scathing voice, and she points to a deep wound with festering edges.
“As long as I can remember,” Siri whispers, “I’ve always had it.””

“At the end, everyone falls asleep - all except one. Everyone always falls asleep at the end - all except the blessed. But before everyone falls asleep, a chase has taken place. Where to find the friend I seek? Each of them, before they fell asleep, had been searching. In the mornings, we find them sleeping everywhere, many in the strangest positions. In the mornings, the seekers are sleeping. Some sleep in the forest on black stones, stretched out across the stones, their nails torn. Some come floating along the current, their hair flowing in the opposite direction. Many are lying in meadows; in the mornings some meadows look like battlefields, but battlefields without blood. Some lie in hollows. This small, black hollow - could it be my home? But no one asks, all the seekers fall asleep wherever they have found something; and if they haven’t found anything, they fall asleep where they are. In the morning, we find many on glaciers, their arms melting, and some are hanging in the trees, vertically as if they were standing on air.
Yes, in the mornings we find them in all places, those who have been searching for their friend.”… (more)